Government and insurance institutions have introduced many safety standards that auto manufacturers should comply with to reduce the risk of serious and fatal injury to occupants during side impact crashes. To achieve a desired crash-worthiness the auto industry focuses on developing better vehicle side body structures to meet the standards for multiple side impact crash tests, such as Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS) Side Impact Crashworthiness Evaluation (SICE) and FMVSS 216 (roof-crush) vehicle safety tests.
Engineers design side structures to meet several design goals, including efficiency, weight loss and cost as well as to meet vehicle safety test requirements. To find an optimum thickness for vehicle side body components that meet varying design goals, design engineers typically simulate vehicle safety tests with components of varying thicknesses. Thus, one can find an optimum thickness of a component for a vehicle safety test by individually adjusting the thickness for each component. However, an optimum thickness of a component for one vehicle safety test may be different for other vehicle safety tests. Therefore, design engineers may have to guess an optimum thickness for components that meet two or more vehicle safety tests. Thus, traditional approaches to design and tune vehicle side structures by considering each vehicle test separately is inefficient and requires significant design time and experience. Still, the engineer may not find the optimum structure with respect to weight and strength.